ANALYSIS: What’s Behind Islamic State’s Twin Terror Attack On Spain?

The Islamic State once again attacked an European country this week, striking Spain in twin terror attacks.

Hours after ISIS terrorists rammed a car into a crowd in the coastal city of Barcelona in northeastern Spain, killing 13 people and injuring more 100 others, Spanish police thwarted a second attack in Cambrils, which is about 70 miles south of Barcelona.

Five terrorists wearing fake suicide belts tried to carry out another ramming attack, but a police patrol saw them and opened fire on the assailants’ Audi A3 early Friday morning.

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The attack in Cambrils killed one person and injured at least six more, including a police officer, while all the terrorists were killed by the Spanish security forces.

Spanish authorities fear that the death toll will rise, as more than 17 people remain in critical condition following the double attack, which ISIS claimed responsibility for via its Amaq news agency. .

The assault on Barcelona and Cambrils marked the first time the Islamic State succeeded in carrying out terror attacks in Spain, which was the scene of a massive al-Qaeda bombing in March 2004, when four commuter trains were targeted, killing 191 people.

Over the past two years, Spanish security forces foiled several ISIS-inspired plots to carry out massive attacks on Spanish soil.

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The Islamic State’s attacks on Spain could indicate the organization is changing its focus from punishing European countries which are directly involved in the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria to attacking states that were once part of its original Caliphate.

Spain was known as al-Andalus during the Caliphate of the Ummayad dynasty, which conquered large parts of the country in the eighth century. The Spanish emirate lasted for almost four centuries, and crumbled in 1031 when a number of independent taifas replaced the emirate.

At the start of 2016, the Islamic State announced that it intended to re-impose Muslim rule over Spain.

The jihadist group released a video which showed an ancient map of al-Andalus (Spain), and declared that the time had come to expand the Caliphate into North Africa and southern Europe.

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“We will recover our land from the invaders,” an ISIS terrorist said in the video, referring to the age of the first Caliphate.

The publication of the video coincided with an ISIS announcement that the terrorist group would flood Europe with Muslim refugees from Syria, Libya and Iraq.

Spanish authorities, however, succeeded in keeping immigrants away from its territory by housing them in the Spanish enclave Melilla in Morrocco, where they had to apply for asylum.

The immigrants who successfully applied for asylum didn’t stay in Spain, though.

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An estimated 98 percent of the refugees moved on to other European countries where living conditions are better, Francisco Cansino, the director of the Spanish Refugee Aid Commission in Malaga, said last year.

Moreover, Spain doesn’t provide Muslim refugees with benefits and has a very high unemployment rate (25 percent), whereas asylum-processing times are much longer in Spain than in other European countries.

But this doesn’t mean Spain doesn’t have its own homegrown problem with radical Muslims.

Spain has become a hub for ISIS Haras Rafiq, the chief executive of counter-extremist organization Quilliam told Sky News Friday.

“I am not surprised, Spain has had a problem for a while,” Rafiq said, while adding that the Spanish authorities are monitoring over 1000 people whom they suspect of having ties to the Islamic State, and that 700 Muslims are currently going through the court system in the country for the same reason.

“We know that Spain is a hub through which people are sent out to join ISIS and to return back to Europe and just because Spain hasn’t had an attack for a while, it doesn’t mean that all of these things have been bubbling underneath,” Rafiq said.

Rafiq added that he expected more ISIS attacks on Europe in the near future because the jihadist organization is on its “back foot.”

Regardless, ISIS showed once again that it has not lost its ability to strike at targets in Western countries.

The terror cell responsible for the twin attacks in Spain reportedly came from Syria and plotted to carry out a much larger attack on Spain.

Investigators on the Iberian Peninsula believe the well-organized terrorists wanted to hire a large truck similar to the one used in the attack on Nice in France last year.

When they failed to hire the truck due to missing papers, they opted to rig a smaller vehicle with explosives but failed, according to The Mirror.